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About this blog

Writing and life, mostly. I'm very opinionated and I do get political. Be warned. Also, I swear a lot.

Entries in this blog

Biphobia, monosexism and pansexuality

I was browsing Tumblr the other day when I came across this quote:   It's a quote by a woman named Amy André, from a speech on bisexual health.   I was reminded of it when this thread emerged in The Lounge, regarding olympic diver Tom Daley. Now, Tom Daley has said that he's in a relationship with another guy. Good for him. I think this is awesome. He also says he still fancies girls. As far as I'm concerned, this places him pretty firmly in the bisexual category as far as

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

This Is What Always Happens

I always end up feeling a little bit on the outside. It's nobody's fault but my own. I don't do well in large groups. I used to be the one who just sat in the corner. I'm better now, I can talk to people and partake in group activities, but I invariably keep everyone a little bit at arm's length. Not that I don't share or discuss, I'm quite open most of the time, just that I keep me, the person I am on the inside, the quirks of my personality, a little bit on the inside. So I keep my distance, e

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Health Care Is an Awesome Thing!

This is kind of an old video but since I can't sleep, I'm browsing content on Upworthy just for shits and giggles, and I stumbled across it and rewatched it. John Green is a really intelligent guy who knows a whole lot, and it occurred to me while watching this video that if I lived in the US, odds are I would be unable to pay for my antidepressants, and that would seriously suck. For 98 10mg tablets, of which I take two a day, I pay 74NOK, which is $12 US. That is roughly $7 per month. I don't

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Camp NaNoWriMo

I've been meaning to do NaNoWriMo for years, but I never got around to it. November always seems to be a bad month for me. So when I heard about Camp NaNoWriMo this year, I decided this was my chance. So, in April, I finished and rewrote Nemesis. And I won! I'm sort of giddy and very pleased with myself right now.  

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

How to Swear Without Swearing

Attention! This post does contain some actual swearing. Posted this to Tumblr earlier, where it was well-received. Thought I'd share with the community as well.   There are a lot of comparatively mild curse words that we just accept as being family friendly without much thought as to where they come from. Some are just milder versions of a word we consider unacceptable, such as saying 'crap' instead of 'shit' or 'darn' instead of 'damn'. Others have so completely lost their original me

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

What's Going On With Me

So, some of you may have noticed that I haven't been very active lately. I checked the forums yesterday and had a huge shock when I noticed that the member status thingies had changed... I haven't been busy. I'm still unemployed. I've barely been writing, and I haven't touched an instrument in like two weeks.   I've just been depressed.   It's been coming in sort of waves. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make an appointment with my GP to see if I could get a referra

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

To Russia With Love

Personally, I'm boycotting the olympics this year. Sadly, the gay rights aspect isn't even the worst of it. There's corruption at the very heart of the whole thing, more than a third of the money spent is unaccounted for, and guest workers from Kazakstan had their passports stolen by their employers and were deported without getting paid. Basically, the whole thing stinks.   But given the nature of this website, the LGBT issue is the most relevant, so I thought I'd share this little th

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

How the TV-show Young Americans Broke Down the Gender Binary

I got a bit of a memory jog when people started talking about The O.C. the other day, because of the show's 10th anniversary. When that show came out, I was already a little done with the high school drama genre, and was moving on to anime, sci-fi, fantasy and horror themed tv-series. I used to watch Popular pretty regularly, and I even had time to, for a season or so, really like Dawson's Creek, though I was young at the time. But there was one high school drama type of series that stood out, a

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

My Gender Identity

Over the years I've been here, I've gotten the odd PM asking me whether I'm actually male or female. I have answered these questions truthfully. When I returned after my hiatus, I was really happy to find that there's now a non-binary option under gender, as there wasn't one before. I identify as genderqueer, gender fluid, or non-binary. When I first got here, I didn't. Or, that is, I lacked the language to.   I was assigned female at birth, and I always thought I was comfortable that

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Brokeback Mountain and Other Terrible Films

Note: I'm frustrated. I swear. Deal with it.   I was browsing YouTube yesterday when I came across a 10 Best LGBTQ Movies video. As I always do, I clicked on it, cause I'm always up for potentially finding new movies to watch. There were some good ones on the list, such as Call Me By Your Name, Milk, and Weekend for instance, and I found a couple I hadn't seen, either. But when they got down to #3, they lost me, because according to them the third best LGBTQ film in history is Brokebac

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

What's been going on with me and why I haven't been around

So, I haven't been here much lately, and the longer you stay away the harder it is to come back. So I thought I'd post a sort of general update for those who might be interested.   First of all, I'm doing okay. I take my meds, I get up in the mornings and go to school (I haven't quite mastered getting up the mornings I don't have school, but I'm working on it), I do my homework, I mostly eat proper food and the flat isn't a complete mess. Magpie's busy with work and uni, I'm just busy

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Danger: Inclusive Messaging Ahead

Consider the title your warning. This is my blog. I write what I want. Deal with it.    I think it's a shame that we can't have philosophical discussions on ways to potentially expand and improve our writing horizons without someone taking it personally and ruining the party. This is supposed to be a website for authors and their stories. You'd think that discussing writing techniques and tools would be integral to that. When it comes to writing tools, techniques, and advice, you'

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Gender Politics In Art Therapy Group

Today a dude in my group presented a painting with a bunch of hearts, meant to represent how sharing in art therapy group had helped him and put him in touch with his emotions and stuff, which, good for him. He prefaces this by saying, 'So, a bunch of hearts... Boys don't really draw hearts, I guess that's a little feminine...' This is the guy who's previously complained about his boss being a woman, said he doesn't think a female therapist can understand a male patient, and made a whole bu

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Why I Suck at NaNoWriMo

When I write a short story, I usually sit down and write until I'm done. Then I go back, revise, edit, remove stuff, add stuff, read it out loud to myself, fix every minor thing in the dialogue, and then, when I'm happy with it, I'll send it to a beta or an editor, or both. That is my process.   When I write a novel, I can't just write until I'm done. I'll write a chapter, go back and read it, polish it, add stuff and take stuff out. Then I'll move on and write the next bit, and maybe

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

My Problem with Writing Right Now

When you've been depressed for a while, and you've found writing really hard, getting back into it can be a bit of a challenge. I'm feeling a lot better now. Going to school to study sound engineering this autumn, and it feels like my life is back on some kind of track. But the writing is still difficult.   The problem is that I have lots of ideas, and I want to get back to writing properly, I really do. But I'm mostly motivated to work on my new ideas. So I sit down thinking, 'I'm gon

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

NaNoWriMo and Fundraising

I'm doing it again! November is almost here, and I will be participating in NaNoWriMo once more. Last year, I won with Nemesis 2 (which, as many of you are aware, still isn't quite finished; I'm in the editing and rewriting stage and totally stuck, but I'm sure it'll come). This year, I will be working on the detective novel I've been planning for some months now. I'm really excited for it, which is awesome, as I don't get really excited about things very often these days.   Now, it ju

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Out And Proud

Today, inspired by the good feels of Oslo's Pride celebration, I had a very public coming out on Facebook (very public; I even set it to 'public' so that any bigots who want to friend me will be able to see it and think better of it). I don't know what I expected, but my friends have just been heaping love and support on me, which is really wonderful. My mum hasn't acknowledged the post, though. I don't know if she just hasn't seen it yet or doesn't know how to handle it or what...   W

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Your Existence Is Political

I've been censoring myself. We all do, here on GA, those are the rules. No political discussion outside The Pit. But what's political? When someone complains about a public figure bringing politics into what they're doing (like Wil Weaton's fans losing their shit when he posted a picture on Instagram of his hand giving Trump Tower the finger), what they're really complaining about is them bringing the wrong kind of politics into it. There's no such thing as apolitical. Everything's political. Wh

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Erasure

This came from an article about the 2005 book Born Gay, and was shared in a thread in the Tech and Science Geeks club a few days ago. In attempting to prove that being gay is genetic, the authors found it necessary to suggest that bisexuality does not exist. I can understand that. If people are genetically either gay or straight, phenomenons like bisexuality become hard to explain. Easier to just pretend they don’t exist and omit them from the equation so you can more easily prove what you’re tr

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

What's Easter Anyway?

Easter is a holiday throughout the Christian world to celebrate that Jesus died for the sins of human kind and rose again on the third day. That's basically the answer that most people will give, and it's perfectly correct. In most languages, the name for Easter tends to be some derivation of the verb 'to pass', taken from the Hebrew Pesach, a Jewish holiday that in English is known as Passover, and which was being celebrated in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion. That name has simply been

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Self-Publishing, Self-Marketing, and the Self

There is this overwhelmingly popular opinion that self-publishing, to some degree, isn't valid. It's what we do here on GA, of course, and putting out your work for free on the Internet for people to see seems to be acceptable and sometimes commended, but as soon as an author tries to make money from self-publishing their work—either by setting up a Patreon and asking for donations, or by publishing their work using services like Lulu and Amazon KDP and thus circumventing the traditional publish

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

On Being a Writer and Encountering Angry Readers

Neil Gaiman once wrote, in response to angry A Song of Ice and Fire fans demanding the next book in the series, 'George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.' Much like getting attacked on Twitter, I think alienating readers is proof that you're doing something right, if that makes any sense. You've pushed someone's buttons, made them think or feel in some way, even if it was negative. I have alienated multiple readers because of artistic choices I have made, and the same artistic choices have ke

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

What's wrong with my body?

WARNING: Getting mildly graphic about my symptoms here, so don't read if that bothers you...   I've not been around as much lately because I've been ill and I'm starting to worry. I've been almost constantly sick since before Christmas. I really thought I was finally better and then this throat infection took hold, the day after my birthday, no less. (Happy Birthday, Thorn! Here, have some more pain!) I'm tired. I don't sleep well. I wake up way before my alarm, feeling sick and misera

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

Now the Fun Begins

I finished NaNoWriMo! I’m a winner! I feel really happy and accomplished and proud of myself and very happy. Look, I got a certificate and everything!     Of course, this doesn’t mean that the novel is finished. Far from it. I’ve mostly finished all the chapters, and mostly done it the way I planned. But this is just a rough draft. Currently, the sequel to Nemesis (the proper title of which will be decided at a later date) is a collection of loose scenes, it feels like. That

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

The Evolution of a Novel: Characters

I started writing Nemesis a decade or so ago. While the essence of the story was the same, so many things about it have changed.   Back then, Dave's name was Leo. Leo was a far more aggressive, macho type of character than Dave. When I began to rewrite the story from the beginning, a bit less than three years ago, I found that Leo had changed so drastically as to be almost unrecognisable, and his name had to change. Dave just felt right, somehow.   Nick has always mirrored me

Thorn Wilde

Thorn Wilde

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